Dear list members,
(I apologise if you have already received a copy of this)
Please find details below for a PhD course in Design Anthropology which will run next spring at the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen 22nd - 26th March 2010 and at the newly founded Participatory Innovation
Research Centre, Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark 3rd - 7th May 2010.
Places are limited to 25 students and we are hoping for a diversity of disciplinary backgrounds (including design!). We encourage you to apply as soon as possible if you are interested.
Best regards,
Jared Donovan
SPIRE Centre,
University of Southern Denmark
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Design Anthropology
Organisers Wendy Gunn, Jared Donovan, Tim Ingold and James Leach
Design Anthropology is an emergent field concerned with the design of technologies
that build upon and enhance embodied skills of people, through attention to the
dynamics of performance and the coupling of action and perception (as against the
more traditional focus on mental computational operations). This is a radically new
area of research that cuts across a wide range of fields from industrial design, through
human movement studies and ecological psychology, to sociocultural anthropology.
From an anthropological perspective, it resonates with four areas of interest that are
generating some of the most exciting new work in the discipline: exchange and
personhood in the production and use of technology, the understanding of skilled
practice, the anthropology of the senses and the aesthetics of everyday life.
The aim of the course is to challenge conventional thinking regarding the nature of
design and creativity, in a way that acknowledges the improvisatory skills and
perceptual acuity of people. Combining theoretical investigations and practice based
experiments in a series of research seminars; the course addresses questions regarding
methodological innovation within processes of designing/ using things. Studying the
relation between design practice and use practice, researchers place emphasis on the
creativity of design and emergence of objects in social situations and collaborative
endeavour. Specifically, current anthropological theories concerning institutional
divisions between innovation and improvisation, transactions, exchange and
personhood will be brought to bear on the form objects take in technological or other
contexts giving due attention to the situated nature of processes of production and
consumption, and to social form. Working alongside international researchers from
academia and industry, doctoral students are asked to contribute towards long-term
research goals of expanding understandings of ethnographic practice in academia and
industry, and developing a research agenda for the emergent field of design
anthropology.
The two-part course will take place at the Dept. of Anthropology, University of
Aberdeen 22nd - 26th March 2010 and at the newly founded Participatory Innovation
Research Centre, Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark 3rd - 7th
May 2010. A detailed course description, reading list and evaluation criteria will be
available online for registered students from the end of December 2009.
Application procedure: Doctoral candidates from the disciplines of architecture,
philosophy, design and innovation, engineering and anthropology are encouraged to
apply. A detailed statement (500 words maximum) outlining research interests in
design anthropology along with a one page CV is required. Applicants are requested
to register before 18th of December 2009.
Contact: [log in to unmask]
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